help re-instate The Instigator

The Instigator needs your help. The feature, which has run for the last four years at CBC ( http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/hnic/instigator/ ) and three years before that at inthecrease.com, is an involuntary holding pattern. After the NHL and the CBC lockouts ended all appeared well until the author Charlie Teljeur was informed the cartoons would not return “until/unless the CBC found another sponsor” to make it work. In the past CBC usually proceeded knowing that acquiring an advertiser would only be a matter of time. This year, apparently with stricter corporate guidelines, is different.

Mike Lee, an old friend of who runs a San Jose Shark fansite ( www.thefeeder.com ), noticed the lack of cartoons this year and decided to contact Charlie to find out why. Since hearing of Teljeur’s plight, Mike has spearheaded a movement to get The Instigator back online. His blog ( http://savetheinstigator.blogspot.com/ ) is crusade-central for this dilemma. Mike encourages you to visit the site, lend your support and make CBC see that there are indeed a lot of hockey fans who miss the cartoons and want them back.

What does Mike hope to accomplish by doing this? Hopefully a strong show of support through a deluge of emails will show CBC how many Instigator fans there are out there. Perhaps a corporate white knight will ride up and become that needed corporate sponsor. Or maybe another site with a large fanbase, a cache of resources and a good hockey reputation will bring the feature at their own website. Whatever the result, your support is paramount in making this a reality. By urging CBC through your emails, by spreading the word to others about the cause and by showing the hockey world there is still room for The Instigator, you can get it back online.

Hell, it works for TV shows they try to cancel. Let’s show them it can work for online cartoons as well.